It might be the time of day we feel our kids are safest — late afternoon, when supper’s cooking and everyone’s home from school.

Sure, we limit their screen time. But what’s an hour or two?

The thing is, when kids are tucked away from whatever danger might lurk on the street, they’re most vulnerable to a much more pressing threat — Internet predators.

After school, between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., tends to be the most common time for strangers to contact kids online, OPP investigators say.

While kids seem to be safely in their rooms, “chatting” with friends online and — let’s face it, giving parents a break — they could be wandering in a virtual minefield of anonymous predators.

“Parents don’t get it. A lot of parents give their kids a device to help pacify them and to babysit, but your child could be at risk,” said Det. Sgt. Paul Thompson of the OPP’s child sexual exploitation unit. “It’s kind of a lazy approach to looking after your kids’ interest.”

A generation ago, before the digital revolution, police investigations involving sexual violations against kids in Ontario were few and far between.

Now, those same police forces probe thousands of cases a year.

Just-released figures show violations against children are among the only crimes on the rise in Canada.

The weapon?

It’s the Internet, communications technology that allows predators to lure innocent victims from the comfort of their homes and to spread images, often of child pornography, to others at rapid-fire pace.

“The Internet has provided them with the perfect tool to find each other and prey upon kids and feel anonymous,” said Det. Staff Sgt. Frank Goldschmidt, who’s been with the OPP pornography unit since 1991. “They are not dealing face-to-face, they are dealing computer terminal to computer terminal.”

But the same technology that’s opened the digital floodgates to child predators also makes it possible for police to more easily track them — and their victims — down across the globe.

So, where are the predators?

Facebook?

Kid-geared messaging apps such as Kik?

Online adventure and sports games?

All of the above, Goldschmidt said.

“They’re hanging their hats in those areas, waiting for someone to come in and they’ll pounce on them.”

Thompson said parents who consider themselves protective would be surprised by the “exploitive material, text and messages” undercover officers see in mainstream chat rooms for kids.

Despite widespread education campaigns to warn adults and children about predators, some say too many parents simply let their kids roam free.

“What’s surprising to me is how parents don’t seem to care who their children are talking to and what’s on their profile,” Thompson said. “You wouldn’t send your seven-year-old to a park three blocks down the road to talk to somebody, so why would you let them out on their own on the Internet?”

What police see today — thousands of cases a year in Ontario, and overwhelmed cybercrime units worldwide — is in stark contrast to what Thompson and other police veterans faced before the Internet.

“At that time, it would have been very uncommon for us to do more than one or two cases a year,” said Goldschmidt, who joined the OPP pornography unit when it had only one other officer.

The work never ends for officers in cybercrime units. In London, there’s been a 300% jump in Internet luring cases this year alone. The teams sort through oceans of disturbing images and investigate thousands of cases a year involving child exploitation, abuse and assault.

“The number of calls for service coming in is astounding,” Goldschmidt said.

The OPP office has 15 dedicated officers, but “could have 100 more . . . and they’d all be busy,” he said.

The predators, he said, “have perfected their techniques — they know exactly where to go, where they are going to find the kids . . . they know if somebody’s looking for attention.”

There are signs parents are paying more attention, at least in London.

Tips by parents are credited for triggering 13 of 16 child-luring probes by city police so far this year, numbers that fuelled a 300% spike in reports of child luring compared with the first six months of 2013.

Swamped as they might be, police say the more tips the better in an endless fight against pedophiles.

“I don’t know how you’d ever curb a trend like that,” Goldschmidt said. “These people are out there.”

If your child is using live text and voice chats for online games, warn them not to give personal information to a stranger.

Activate protection features on websites.

Keep computer in common area like the kitchen.

Educate kids about the risks of webcam use.

Be careful about what you post about your children.

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THEN versus NOW

A cybercrime detective reflects on child porn investigations from the late 1990s:

“When the police received complaints, they were often from Canada Post or photo-processing centres . . . The Internet was still evolving. Polaroid cameras and VCRs were still in use. . . . there weren’t file-sharing programs available to the public, as is the case today,” Det. Grant Fair, London police